You might not think that a House of Lords report would be the place to look for examples on driving forward social media aware government – but First Report of the Information Committee, title ‘Are the Lords listening? Creating connections between people and Parliament‘ there is a lot of evidence of a practical removing the barriers approach to unlocking interactivity.

Take a look at the section on Social Media and you find talk of removing the legal barriers to putting parliamentary proceeding on YouTube, of training for members of the Lords to actually do this, and of removing barriers to Parliamentary video being embedded on other websites.

It’s not about replacing the Lords with a Social Network Sites and online forums – rather the report notes that:

“….social media isn’t the answer to everything, [but] they allow direct communication with members of the public. The House of Lords should use these established tools regularly with, for example, inquiries.”

It’s pretty much this sort of approach – a balance recognition of the value of social media to increase openness and improve policy making – and then taking practical steps to remove the barriers to it’s use – which the Interactive Charter is all about. Perhaps some of the contributors to the House of Lords report would like to dive in and help shape the draft of the Charter on Mixed Ink.

(Hat tip to Hansard Society through whose tweets I saw this had been published – and lots of credit must go to the Parliament Web Team whose innovation and outreach has, I daresay, contribute a lot to the level of understanding of social media apparent in the report.)